This paper was originally prepared for a seminar of the Executive Board of the Fund. In the seminar, Executive Directors expressed a broad range of views with regard to both the adequacy of the Fund's approach to financial programming and the validity of the analysis presented in this paper

This occasional paper provides an overview of the economic reform experiences of the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union since their independence at the turn of the decade. The choice of countries reflects not only a geographical grouping, but also similarities in the types of...

Ten years after regaining independence, the Baltic Countries--Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--are expected to be invited to join the European Union (EU) and NATO in 2004. This paper provides a macroeconomic perspective on the Baltics' remarkable economic success to date and of the fiscal...

Over the past two years, the IMF staff has been developing a new multicountry macroeconomic model called the Global Economy Model (GEM). This paper explains why such a model is needed, how GEM differs from its predecessor model, and how the new features of the model can improve the IMF’s...

In 2001- 02, Argentina experienced one of the worst economic crises in its history. A default on government debt, which occurred against the backdrop of a prolonged recession, sent the Argentine currency and economy into a tailspin. Although the economy has since recovered from the worst, the...

German banks tend to be less profitable than their foreign counterparts. This paper estimates the likely effect of the phaseout of state guarantees for public sector banks, reviews the various ways in which public policy could contribute to their restructuring, and discusses the various...

This paper discusses the significant overall progress with macro stabilization of these transition countries during 1992-1997. While average inflation declined steadily since 1992, output fell significantly for many of these countries during this period, and it was not unti 1996-97 that as a...

Upon entry into the European Union, countries become members of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), with a derogation from adopting the euro as their currency (that is, each country joining the EU commits to replace its national currency with the euro, but can choose when to request...